


Creepy Crawlies

by Bopdawoo



Series: Smash Bros: World of Oneshots [1]
Category: Super Smash Brothers
Genre: Autistic Character, Autistic Shulk, Gen, Shulk Is Trying His Best, actually u know what, autistic pit, autistic villager, because shulk is scared of bugs and pit wants to help him Not be scared, hi hello xenoblade chronicles de comes out in like seven days i'm going FERAL, my city now, pit and villager are here to help, so i'ma spread some Shulk Appreciation, so uh fair warning, these three are Good Bois, this work Heavily features insects n bugs and the handling of them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:15:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24315664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bopdawoo/pseuds/Bopdawoo
Summary: Pit finds Shulk's fear of a certain insect a bit laughable, and does his best to help anyways.
Relationships: Pit (Kid Icarus) & Villager (Animal Crossing), Shulk (Xenoblade Chronicles) & Pit (Kid Icarus), Shulk (Xenoblade Chronicles) & Villager (Animal Crossing)
Series: Smash Bros: World of Oneshots [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1755418
Comments: 12
Kudos: 34





	Creepy Crawlies

**Author's Note:**

> Characters: Shulk, Pit, Villager  
> Rating: K+  
> Genre: friendship  
> Wordcount: ~4,800
> 
> As an insect lover, writing from the pov of an insect fearer is a bit strange lmao. 99% of the people I know would lose their mind if a spider crawled across their face when they were trying to sleep but last time that happened to me I picked it up and spent a minute baby talking it y'all I was OVERJOYED. Anyways love these three and play their games.
> 
> Fun fact! Shulk's preferences for likes and dislikes of certain bugs are taken directly from his game.

For once, Shulk is outside, drawn out of the library and his lab by a warm sunny day. He’s stretched himself out under the dappled shade of an oak tree, glancing between the pages of a book on ancient Sheikah tech and the notes he’s taking. The last many pages in his notebook are all scribbled diagrams and passages and thoughts on the book; it’s all fascinating stuff, this Sheikah technology. He’d like to pester Zelda about it a bit more but it seems she’s busy today, so he’s content to settle into this book.

Nearby he can hear a group of his fellow smashers playing with a frisbee. He’d been invited earlier, but he turned them down (politely, he hopes) in favor of his research. He can hear them hooting and hollering as they run around, and they’re close enough that while he does hear them, luckily they’re not all that distracting.

He’s just flipped to a page on the Sheikah tablet’s app functions when something crashes through the branches overhead. He glances up to see a bright orange frisbee, stuck up above him. He can already hear someone barreling over to retrieve it. Shulk sighs and quietly accepts his train of thoughts being derailed for the moment.

“Hey! Dude!” Pit’s the one who’s come running over. The angel’s cheeks and shoulders are a bit red and Shulk briefly wonders if he forgot sunscreen (an angel who lives in the sky can get sunburn, that’s an interesting thought).

“What’cha reading?” Pit asks, and leans down to get a look at the page his book is opened to.

“It’s just a book on Sheikah tech,” he explains.

Pit tilts his head inquisitively. “Does it have pictures?”

Right, Pit can’t read. There’s a little diagram in the corner and that seems to be what he’s focused on. “There’s a few, but it’s mostly text and diagrams.”

“Oh, okay.” Pit lingers for another moment before abruptly jumping up and grabbing one of the lowest branches, quickly clambering up into the tree to retrieve the frisbee. Shulk notices a few green acorns fall nearby from all the jostling up above and he reaches out to grab one. It’s got a nice color to it, interesting scaly texture on the cap too-

_ “GO LONG!” _

Shulk starts with a flinch and looks up as the angel flings the frisbee back towards the other players, from up in the tree still. He pockets the acorn into his vest (outer left chest pocket, for all the sharp and/or hard little things he finds that would irritate him were they in an inner pocket). Well, at least he’ll be able to concentrate again, just as soon as Pit makes his way back down. Shulk hears him laugh about something before the branches overhead shake violently.

“Be careful!” he calls up as more acorns come raining down. One beans him in the head.

“This branch is so bouncy!” Pit replies, and the branches shake again. “Hey, have you ever been up here before? You can see the pool if you get high enough!”

“I, uh, I haven’t,” Shulk answers. “I don’t really-”

Something that’s  _ not _ an acorn lands on his head and tumbles onto his open book, and the moment he sees it Shulk shrieks and throws himself backwards and out of the way of that  _ horrid  _ beast.

“What happened!?” Shulk scrambles to safety behind the trunk as Pit drops from the branches, hits the ground in a ready stance with wings all mantled up and feathers puffed out. “Where’s the danger?”

“My book,” Shulk gasps. “It’s on my book.”

Pit spins on his heel, looking ready to take anything down in that moment, but then he slowly drops his stance, feathers flattening once more.

“Are you… talking about the caterpillar?”

“Please get it off my book,” Shulk begs. “I can’t stand them.”

Pit stands there, brow furrowed, as he thinks, and Shulk watches a grin spread across the angel’s face that he doesn’t like. “Wait,” Pit laughs. “Wait, wait-”

“Pit  _ please-” _

“You’re scared of  _ caterpillars?” _

“I- they’re  _ creepy!” _ Shulk protests in dismay as Pit scoops up the writhing little monster in his  _ bare hands _ . “They're so squishy and they have way too many legs and  _ nO GET IT AWAY-” _

The researcher throws himself backwards when the caterpillar is thrust towards his face.

“It’s just a  _ baby butterfly! _ Chill out!” Pit insists.

From a safe distance away Shulk replies, “Absolutely not! They’re disgusting!”

Pit takes in a huge gasp, and glances down to the caterpillar. “What was that?” he asks, and brings it right up to his ear.

“What are you  _ doing?” _

Pit says, very seriously, “Mister Caterpillar is very offended, and demands you apologize or face his wrath.”

Is he seriously fooling around with that thing? Shulk stubbornly crosses his arms and declares, “You can’t talk to caterpillars.”

He watches Pit wiggle his eyebrows ominously. “But what if I actually  _ can?” _

Shulk drags a hand down his face with a noise like a deflating balloon. He’s tired. “I’m not coming over there until you get rid of that thing.”

Pit glances down to the caterpillar in his hands, and then looks back up. “Is this really such a huge deal for you?”

Shulk fidgets. “Yes, does it matter?”

“You can’t go through life being scared out of your wits by something so…  _ widdle _ .”

“It’s not  _ widdle _ , it’s horrible.”

“Well, whatever! I wanna help you deal with this.”

“What if I say no?” Shulk counters stubbornly.

Pit reaches up and snaps off a little branch covered in leaves, and coaxes it on as he replies. “I’m not gonna allow you to say no. Besides, I have a friend who could totally help you. Follow me.”

Reluctantly, Shulk does follow, picking up his things from where they’d been laying in the grass. He wipes off the pages of his book with his sweater sleeve, hoping no residue was left behind from when the caterpillar landed. He wonders who Pit means when he talks of this friend of his. “Do you mean Viridi?” he chances, remembering the goddess of nature from Pit’s world.

“No, but good guess. I’m actually thinking of Villager, from Animal Crossing?”

“Why Villager?”

Pit replies happily, “They collect bugs!”

Shulk lets out a noise somewhere between shock and visceral displeasure. “They collect  _ bugs?” _

Pit nods with a big smile. “Come on, we’re gonna help you deal with your fear!”

Shulk lets out a resigned sigh, because he knows Pit well enough to understand that he really has no way of backing out of this. If Pit has decided that he wants to help, then he’s going to help.

They end up finding Villager on the edge of the woods surrounding the mansion grounds, partway underneath a thick bush. Pit calls, “Hey Villy! What’cha up to?”

Villager carefully reverse-crawls out of the bush and turns to show off an  _ absolutely massive _ earthworm. Shulk shudders and averts his gaze and yet he hears Pit cooing over the oozy thing like it’s a puppy.

“Is this big fella for your bug collection?” Shulk looks over to see Villager nod, and then point to the oak branch in Pit’s hand. “Oh, this guy’s for you too!”

Villager seems  _ thrilled _ to receive what Shulk personally considers to be the worst creature in existence. Out of their seemingly endless pocket pops an empty critter carrier, into which goes the branch and caterpillar. Villager fishes around in their pocket again before pulling out a blue baseball cap and presenting it to Pit.

“Thanks, buddy!” Pit pops the hat on over his laurel and then asks, “Can you show us your bug collection please? Shulk is scared of caterpillars and I wanna help him.”

Villager nods with a smile, and motions for them to follow.

“Hang on,” Shulk protests. “I never agreed to all this. What if I don’t want to do this?”

“No one ever wants to face their fears, I sure don’t,” Pit admits. “But would you rather face this with friends who know exactly how to handle bugs like this, or take your chances on your own?”

Shulk grimaces a bit; that’s a fair point. And, he knows deep down that a fear of caterpillars is not on the same level as, say, a fear of falling from high up, or drowning. And Pit really does just want to help. But, it’s not quite enough to coax him into following them.

After another moment Pit says, “Okay, lemme ask you something: how many weird little gadgets do you have in your pockets today?”

“Not enough,” Shulk responds immediately (never enough, you can never have enough, not with so much unique technology out there). “What are you offering?”

“Can I bribe you with some of my old electronics?”

Not much can prompt Shulk to happy-stim on the spot, but the promise of hand-me-down electronics is enough to send his hands fluttering. In his excitement he blurts out, “Can excited particles of ether generate exponential amounts of heat energy when in contact with each other?"

Pit blinks with a blank half-smile, and Shulk realizes belatedly that he’s likely the only person out of the three of them who knows that to be an irrefutable truth to compare against (there you go misusing figures of speech again, you don’t even know the name of that one do you, just stick to being literal-).

Shulk rubs the back of his neck, feeling his cheeks heat up. “Yeah, you can bribe me,” he mutters.

“Great!” Pit cheers. “I’m gonna run and get my stuff. Meet us at Villager’s dorm, and all my old stuff is yours!”

The three of them part ways if only briefly: Pit to grab his promised electronics, Shulk to return his book to his dorm, and Villager to prepare his own dorm for their arrival.

Just face down a caterpillar or two for a whole handful of secondhand electronics. This shouldn’t be too hard, he thinks.

Oh, how wrong he realizes he is once he gets to Villager’s dorm.

Shulk has never actually been in Villager’s room before, so he’s not sure of what it looks like normally. But when he arrives, Pit and Villager are there and surrounded by a maze of glass tanks and critter carriers all over the floor, and he guesses that there’s a different bug in each one of them. Pit looks up with a grin and shows off an old flip phone.

“Want this?” he asks.

“Of course!”

“Great! You gotta hold the caterpillar first.”

Shulk grimaces, and wonders if he could simply run off and hide in the library; there’s plenty of little hideaways for readers who don’t like being disturbed and he doubts Pit knows where many of them are (he can’t read, has he ever been to the library?). But still…

Pit begins digging in the folds of his toga and methodically laying out an array of his old electronics, and even Villager contributes one or two pieces. Shulk surveys the assortment: the flip phone, a pair of worn earbuds, two old Wiimotes, a PS2 controller, several odds and ends that Villager apparently found in a donation box on their island, a pair of headphones with a busted headband, and a blue DS covered in faded Pokemon stickers. Shulk can feel his fingers itching to grab his tools and take them all apart, see how they work, record every last detail in his notebooks.

But, of course, there’s a price on each of them.

Shulk steps fully into the room instead of just lingering in the doorway, and plops himself down on the rug. “You said for the flip phone, I have to hold the caterpillar, right?” Pit nods. Alright then, start smaller. Baby steps. “Earbuds first,” he decides.

Villager pops open a nearby critter carrier and carefully digs around inside, before pulling out what he first thought was just a leaf. Then he notices the legs and antennae.

“Oh, this one’ll be easy for you,” Pit sayd confidently. “It’s just a little leaf bug!”

Well… it doesn’t  _ look _ too bad. Pretty interesting actually. So, Shulk reaches out his hand, and Villager beams and gently nudges the bug into his hand. The feeling of its tiny feet as it walks around isn’t too unnerving, if anything he’s mostly focused on how much it truly does look like a walking leaf. He doesn’t remember seeing any insects quite like this while traveling around Bionis.

“Is it supposed to sway so much?” he asks. As it walks the leaf bug sways unsteadily, even though he’s keeping his hand completely still.

“I think it might be imitating a leaf in the wind,” Pit suggests, and Villager nods.

Shulk hums in thought, watching it for a few more seconds before admitting, “Alright, this one isn’t so bad.”

“See? Told ya.” Pit hands over the earbuds after Villager has taken back their leaf bug, and Shulk examines them more closely. The buds themselves are clean, but the insulatory rubber cord is frayed in several places which exposes the little wires. No way to know the state of the speakers or microphone until he can get back to his lab.

“My cable mice will probably like the wires in this,” he remarks, and carefully rolls up the cord and tucks the earbuds into his vest (inner right chest pocket, for small unintrusive gadgets).

He watched Pit tilt his head a little curiously. “Cable mice?”

“These little mice that like to chew through cables and wires. A lot of engineers hate them, but I think they're actually pretty cute. I've got some as pets back in my room.”

Pit gapes for a moment. “You’ve had pet mice in your room this entire time and you  _ never _ told me?” The angel frowns and his wings droop. “Traitor.”

“You can come meet them later if you really want,” Shulk suggests, and is met with an enthusiastic plea to meet his mice. “Alright, after all this then. Next one.” Pit reaches for the pair of busted headphones and carefully holds them up. The headband is only really being held together by a single wire. “What happened to those?”

Pit looks to the side. “I, uh, donkey kicked them. On accident.”

“... How?”

“Moving on,” Pit coughs. “You pick the bug this time.”

If it’s his pick he’d better make it count, then. Shulk surveys the tanks near him, immediately discounting any that make his skin crawl. Not any of the snails, he doesn’t like the feel of snail slime. No crickets either, he's not too fond of them. He finally decides on a big black beetle nearby; as Villager grabs its critter carrier he glimpses a label that says ‘Stag Beetle’. They carefully fish out the beetle before nudging it into Shulk’s hand, and he gets to fully appreciate its size (just over an inch and a half long, hm) as well as the giant mandibles it sports. Though the way it wiggles its feathery antennae as it explores his hands is definitely cute.

“Hey, check this out.” That’s Pit, approaching with a pen. He holds it out to the stag beetle and it immediately charges forwards, grabs the pencil in its mandibles, and quite literally throws it out of Pit’s grasp. The angel grins. “He wants to fight,” he explains as the beetle stands there, half reared up and flexing its mandibles like it wants to fight something else.

Shulk nods and reminds himself not to get his fingers in the beetle's way as Villager takes it back. Pit hands over the busted headphones, and Shulk points out the pile of odds and ends among the electronics left. Villager nods and selects a large tank nearby, and what he untangles from the branches inside makes Shulk reel back a bit.

“Whoa, what even  _ is _ that?”

“Walking stick insect!” Pit supplies cheerily.

“That’s  _ huge _ ,” is Shulk’s reply. It’s skinny, sure, but it’s  _ long _ . It has to be almost a foot long. Something about those proportions just unnerves him. But, he has to hold it if he wants those parts (which he  _ so very _ does), so he holds out his arm and tries not to make a face as the insect climbs on. Its legs are  _ so long _ , it creeps him out with how it waves them around trying to find places to step.

Shulk hears Pit ask, “Hey Villy, can I hold my big special boy?”, but he’s too busy trying to keep the walking stick from climbing towards his face to see what bug Villager hands over. All he can tell out of the corner of his vision is that it’s large and green, and then the walking stick makes another hellbent attempt to climb on his face. Evidently it  _ really _ doesn’t like being impeded, because with this weird rustly-hissy noise it suddenly unfurls two orange wings and Shulk reels back.

“Don’t like that,” he mutters. Villager saves him and scoops the bug up, heedless of its scrambling and wing-flicking and hissing. With the stick insect gone he’s finally able to get a better look at the ‘big special boy’ that Pit is currently baby-talking, and Shulk just about leaps out of his own skin because  _ it’s a mantis. _

“Don’t tell me you’re scared of these guys too,” Pit lets out an incredulous little laugh at his reaction. The mantis perched on his knee sways ominously, with those giant reaper claws ready to strike as the angel gives him the handful of tech scraps.

Shulk insists, “I’m not scared, they’re just  _ freaky _ .” He  _ swears  _ it’s looking at him with those huge eyes,  _ eugh _ . Well, at least he doesn’t have to hold it. “What do I have to hold for the PS2 controller?”

“What do you think, Villy?” Pit asks.

Villager thinks for a moment, then reaches into a nearby tank and pulls out several-

“Are those _ cockroaches?” _

Pit chortles and quickly apologizes, and Shulk lets out a heavy sigh. Is the PS2 controller really worth it…? Shulk glances over, thinks of all the shiny metal bits he could get at just as soon as it’s his, and after a moment makes up his mind.

“I am only holding  _ one _ ,” he declares, and holds up one finger for emphasis. It takes another glance at the promised game controller to actually go through with sticking his hand out, and that still doesn’t stop him from flinching when Villager drops a roach onto his hand. Oh, he  _ hates _ the feel of its legs as it scurries over his skin, and tries to ignore it by grinding the ball of his foot into the carpet and focusing on that sensation instead. It works a little bit.

“Having fun?”

“Absolutely not,” Shulk grumbles, and looks over to the PS2 controller to resist flinging the cockroach off because he  _ wants _ that controller. “Why do I have to handle all the freaky bugs and not Pit?”

“One, not a lot of bugs freak me out,” Pit begins. “And two, we’re helping you get over your fear with bribery.”

“Are there  _ any _ insects you don’t like?” Shulk asks, glancing at the mantis still perched on the angel’s knee.

Pit thinks for a moment, and ruffles his wings a bit as he decides, “Okay, scorpions are pretty freaky. By the way, why  _ are _ you so scared of caterpillars, anyways?”

Shulk blocks the roach from trying to crawl up his sweater sleeve and Villager  _ finally _ rescues him, and he breathes a sigh of relief before answering, “My best friend Reyn hid a huge one in my sock drawer when we were both little, and it scared me so badly that I’ve been afraid of them ever since.”

“Good ol’ childhood fear,” Pit hums, and passes over the promised controller. “You know, I’ve been scared of falling ever since I was little.

“You have wings, though.”

“Can’t fly,” Pit deadpans.

“Shit, sorry,” Shulk cringes. “I forgot about that.”

“It’s okay, I’m used to it,” Pit waves off cheerfully, but Shulk still feels his heart sink a bit.

“You shouldn’t  _ have _ to be used to it,” he sighs.

Pit shrugs, and holds up the pair of Wiimotes. “These next?”

“Sure.”

Villager smiles innocently as they carefully drag over a large tank, filled two thirds of the way with dirt. The way they cautiously open the tank just a crack to poke around with some tweezers isn’t very reassuring.

Still, Pit says, “oh, you’ll like this one. It matches your hair!”

Shulk reaches up and messes with his bangs. “My hair?”

“You’re both blond.”

Villager brings their cupped hands to the floor, and he’s quite surprised when they release a six inch long tarantula covered in yellow-white hairs. Ah, blond hair.

Shulk hums curiously, watching it slowly crawl right towards him. Villager touched it with their bare hands, could he…? He’s here to hold bugs to begin with, of course he can. Shulk lays his hand down in the tarantula’s path and watches it stretch out its two frontmost legs to get a feel for him with some very featherlight taps on his palm. “Didn’t know there were tarantulas you can touch.”

“I’m not following,” Pit admits after a moment.

“The ones on Gaur Plain have poisonous hairs. Last time I accidentally touched one, I couldn’t feel my hand for four days. It sucks that you can’t even touch them because they’re so adorable.” As the tarantula crawls over his hand he realizes that it’s actually very soft, and much lighter than he expected. It makes sense: tarantulas’ hairs make them soft.

“... Hold on,” Pit starts, “did I just hear you call a tarantula  _ cute? _ ”

“Well, fire tarantulas are definitely cuter, but this one’s pretty cute too. At least you can touch this one without nerve damage, though.”

Pit says, slowly, “You’re so terrified of caterpillars that you can’t even be near one without losing your mind, but you think tarantulas are  _ cute _ .”

“Aren’t they, though? I mean, half my friends would agree with me. Tarantulas are definitely cute.”

Pit just stares at him, and then laughs. “You’re weird, you know that?”

“You openly admit to eating food off the floor, though.”

“It’s called the five second rule and it’s  _ valid _ .”

“... So, what’s  _ your _ opinion on tarantulas?”

Oh, they’re  _ definitely _ cute,” Pit declares, and Villager nods fervently. That’s settled then, so after a few more seconds Shulk gently returns the blond tarantula to its tank with a little help from Villager. Pit hands over the two Wiimotes and declares, “If you want the DS, you gotta hold my mantis.”

Shulk deflates a little with a sigh. “Do I  _ have _ to?”

“Only if you want the DS that badly. You know you can stop if you want, right?”

Shulk bites his lip, grimaces at the mantis perched on Pit’s knee, and then takes a long hard look at the DS and thinks of the quality PCBs and LCDs he could get out of it. Finally he caves and sticks one hand out, and with the other hand he wrings the hem of his shirt.

Pit watches him fidget for a moment and asks, “Are you gonna be okay…?”

“I want the DS,” he asserts.

“Alright, don’t freak and hurt my boy,” Pit asks, and scoops his mantis off his knee to deposit it onto Shulk’s hand.

The researcher decides  _ immediately _ that he doesn’t like the feeling of it crawling around on his skin. The tarantula was soft and never once used its claws, but the mantis’ claws dig into his skin like tiny needles. He doesn’t want to look at it for fear that it’s going to be looking at  _ him _ . Mantises have such huge freaky eyes, and of course the huge reaper claws too. It moves and clambers around and he shudders.

By the time Pit takes his mantis back, Shulk can feel the dread welling up inside, twisting up his insides into knots. Not because of the mantis, but because of what comes  _ after _ the mantis. He knows he could just cut his losses and back out now, he’s won everything but the flip phone. But the flip phone has components that these other devices don’t. He wants those components, and because he wants he’s about to suffer for it.

But that’s not really his only reason for doing this; Pit really does want to help him with this, Villager too. He doesn’t want to let Pit down right at the very end, not after he’s made so much progress. But he hears Villager unlatching the caterpillar’s cage and has to take a deep calming breath.

Pit squeezes his shoulder and says, “You’ve got this, Shulk. You’re  _ super _ brave.”

“I don’t really think I’m particularly brave,” Shulk admits quietly, and then quickly follows up with, “but I’ll give it my best.”

Pit grins and claps him on the back. “There you go! Show that caterpillar who’s boss!”

That’s actually pretty encouraging. Shulk may not be nearly as close with Pit as he is with his friends back in Colony 9, but Pit’s still a good friend. So, Shulk takes another deep breath, and holds his hand out, and is faced with the very same caterpillar that landed on him earlier.

“Oh, not  _ you _ ,” he groans, and Pit bursts out laughing.

“You can do it! You’ll be fine!”

“Will I, though?” is his response, followed by a scream from behind clenched teeth as Villager drops the horrible bug into his hand. Oh,  _ Bionis, _ the feeling of its grubby little feet is even  _ worse _ than he ever imagined. He can feel it squirming around in his hand like a worm and he fidgets relentlessly as Pit continues to encourage him. “I hate this,” he declares. “I hate this so much  _ oh it’s climbing it’s climbing my arm- _ ” Shulk fidgets harder and almost brings his other hand to swat it off, but holds himself back at the last second and just ends up flapping his hand uselessly.

“You can do it, just think of the flip phone,” Pit says.

Yeah, just think about all the wonderful little components he can get out of that phone, and not the horrid little beast making its way up his arm and  _ oh no it’s gonna reach his elbow no no no- _

Shulk feels a massive shudder go up his spine and finally,  _ finally, _ Villager removes the caterpillar. He lets out a huge sigh of relief and slumps forward, just before Pit jostles him with a cheer.

“You did it! You did it, you held a caterpillar and you're fine!” Shulk grins and the promised flip phone is slapped into his waiting hand. “I knew you could do it.” As Pit wraps him into a squeezing hug, wings and all, Villager pulls a party popper out of their pocket and sends confetti all over them with a huge grin.

“Thank you for helping me, guys,” Shulk says earnestly as Pit lets go again; his feathers are all fluffed up. “I, uh, really don’t think I could have tackled that on my own.”

Villager points out the phone in his hand with a sly grin and Pit laughs.

“Right, all you really needed was the right motivation. But this is still totally huge! We gotta do something to celebrate!”

Shulk pauses in confusion. “But, I just earned all these?” he points out, and jostles one of his pockets, now brimming with his prizes.

“I mean something a bit more, like ice cream sundaes!” At this, Villager lights up with a grin and a nod.

Shulk considers this a bit. Honestly, all this excitement took it out of him. He kind of just wants to unwind in his room now. But, then again, Pit makes the best ice cream sundaes in the mansion, and now that it’s on his mind he realizes he’s hungry. But the chance to go back to his room and tinker with all these new electronics…

He wants all of these things, he realizes.

Shulk suggests, “After we make sundaes, we could go to my lab…? Villager, you were kind enough to invite us here, and I promised Pit he could meet my mice and I could also show you how your DS works on the ins-”

“Dude.” Pit cuts him off, quite literally bouncing in place with excitement. His wings flutter as he says, “That would be  _ awesome _ and I would  _ love that.” _

Villager gives a vigorous, excited nod as well.

And so, after helping Villager put their bug containers back in their proper locations, and after Pit helps them each make the best ice cream sundaes they’ll ever have, the three spend the rest of the day crowded around the workbench in Shulk’s room, playing with pet cable mice as Shulk carefully disassembles Pit’s old DS, showing them how it works piece by piece.


End file.
